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Cornell Food Science at the New York State (NYS) Fair:  Graduate students and staff from Cornell University's Department of Food Science hosted a booth in the 4-H Youth Building at the NYS Fair on August 28th, 2012.  Cornell University's Food Science booth engaged over 150 people from different educational backgrounds in interactive educational activities focusing on food safety.  This included coloring books on food safety and proper hand washing techniques.

The Cornell University Food Safety laboratory partnered with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ontario County and 4-H Camp Bristol Hills to provide a week long food science and food safety program as part of the 4-H Camp Bristol Hills during summer 2012.  Educational activities focused on the nature of science, dairy product development, and a simulated outbreak investigation.  4-H Food Science Camp provided over 16 hours of hands-on educational activities in the areas of chemistry, biology, microbiology, and geographic information systems and landscape ecology.  A university professor and graduate student engaged campers in experiments and case studies where they discovered, modeled, and compared the chemical interactions between ingredients in ice cream, butter and cheese; reconstructed the structure of DNA; practiced the steps of an outbreak investigation during a mock "food-borne disease outbreak;" and developed solutions to minimize the risk of future outbreaks.

Twelve campers between the ages of 9-15 participated in the 4-H Food Science Camp.  Program evaluations identified:

• 100% of campers identified they had an excellent experience in the 4-H Food Science Camp
• 83% identified they learned concepts about food science they did not know before
• 75% of campers felt the camp increased their enthusiasm for the science of food safety
• 92% of campers indicated they were interested in learning more about food science
• 75% of campers felt that the instructional approach – demonstrations, hands-on learning, problem solving, all in a camp setting – improved their learning.
•  92% of campers believed they learned more at camp than they would in a classroom.

One camper stated the activity she liked best was "the outbreak investigation since it allowed us to act like genuine food scientists in conducting an experiment."   

Another camper felt the most important thing she learned was "how to properly diagnose a problem in the field of science."

Cornell University hosted the Food Safety 4H Career Explorations workshop for high school students in June 2012.

Andrea Moreno Switt, Food Science graduate student at Cornell University, participated in one activity of the AVID program at Ithaca High School on February 17th.  AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) is a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges. In this activity I talked with 14 students from 11am-1pm about food safety and my research with Salmonella. Students rotated in stations of grad students from different fields.